Macaroni

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Macaroni

Patsy Doe, a girl that I know,
Hates semolina second to none –
She find it just so stodgy-slow
When puddings are meant to be fun !
Her mamma tells her “Patsy, really !
It’s only a bowl of unmolded spaghetti.
Just think of it as chopped-up fusilli,
And eat up all your dessert already.”
(Ah, poor mamma, you’ve no idea just what you’ve done !)

From this moment on, young Patsy
Becomes enamoured by dried clumps of wheat –
She reads gluttonously, so that she
Can understand each straw and sheet –
Strings and pens and pipes and worms,
Shells and wheels and butterflies –
So many forms, so many terms,
She wants to try them all for size.
(Ah, poor mamma, so many types to cook and eat !)

So Patsy learns the difference
Of tagliatelle and fettucini,
(Like how her brother can tell at a glance
A Maserati from Lamborghini.)
She tells her fam’ly of how Columbus
Ate up his pasta dry, of course –
Until he discovered the tomato, thus
He finally created the perfect sauce.
(Ah, poor mamma, too much pasta means no bikini !)

Patsy Doe, a girl that I know,
Finds carb makes her grow up faster –
Time to shake up the status quo
And swap her olive oil for castor.
Enough of the childish alphabetti,
And ravioli parcels with loot in –
With Atkins, maybe she’ll be less sweaty,
And none of the cool kids are eating gluten.
(Ah, poor mamma, with cupboards full of uncooked pasta…)

A Wilful Child

A Young Girl Reading by Charlotte Weeks

A Wilful Child

Here comes Abigail,
Searching for the Holy Grail –
She looks for it in Mark and Luke,
She looks for it in John
But once she sees it’s all a fluke
She learns what’s going on.

Abigail, Abigail,
Making all the rabbis wail,
Making all the imams hush,
Making all the vicars blush.

Here comes Abigail,
Grabbing scripture by the tail –
Tearing through the Psalms and Acts,
Incase it’s all a con –
She’s chasing down elusive facts
To suss what’s going on.

Abigail, Abigail,
Making all the abbés quail,
Making all the prophets cry,
And simply by her asking “why ?”

Just Another Joe

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Just Another Joe

Poor little child, for now comes the naming,
The blanding and saming,
The cautious conforming,
The def’nitely not standing out from the norming.
But, loving parents, just look to your child,
For whatever’s chosen is hereafter filed –
For eighteen years onwards they cannot correct,
So only with courage and passion select.

For do we so need yet another Amanda ?
Or Johnny or Sandra ?
Or Alan or Gary ?
And are we deficient in Tom, Dick or Harry ?
So please do not foist them with Julie or Sam,
Nor Timmy, nor Mary, nor Philip, nor Pam.
For Cathy and Bill are as common as Claire
While Helens and Davids are found everywhere.

Now these names aren’t bad, they are just overused,
Their power diffused.
While others, no fairer,
Must serve in a purpose beyond their poor barer –
To label a kid with your own precious name
Is vanity foremost, to make them the same,
To moniker sprogs just to honour the dead
Is dubious burden to thrust in their head.

Yet some names stand out from the Susan and Ron –
Like Homer or Marlon,
Like Kingsley or Rudyard,
Like Heathcliff, or Linford, or else Isambard.
So Brooke and Keanu and Kelsey and Storm
Can ease off some pressure from Amy and Norm.
Give each of us fewer with whom we need share –
A little less common, a little more rare.

One of my first attempts to document my fascination with names, and also an early foray into my habit of versifyig a checklist.  I note that all of the examples in the final stanza call to mind a particular individual, which I’m sure I intended, but which I now think would be just as unfortunate on the poor kids as calling them Alfie or Sophie.

Salvation United

cute little boy with football ball on sports ground
Photo by Gustavo Fring on Pexels.com

Salvation United

Pick a team, son,
Any team you like,
But choose them well –
They’re yours now, tyke,
Your burden, your dream,
Through joy and hell,
Through triumph and strife –
For you must support your team
For the rest of your life.

Don’t ever think
That you can change,
Don’t show disloyalty.
Their ways are strange,
But do not blink –
You must persist,
To treat your lads like royalty.
And even though
They barely know you exist,
You still must follow them
Through goalless draws and penalties missed –
Taste the myths and swallow them.

For they are your brand now,
Your Lord, your quest,
So bare their sponsor
On your chest.
And swear a vow to never don
The colours of a rival squad,
Don’t play away to Babylon,
But trust in the blessed boots of your God.
And don’t be lured to other cults,
By better results or midfield flare –
Do not betray, come Saturday,
For thirty pieces of silverware.

Sing in the stands, you never know,
You just might spur them on,
Or yell at the screen from your sofa,
Till all the communion pies have gone.
Send your hopes and glory beaming
Over the ether,
Praying for goals,
Trust in a messianic coach to pull the levers, switch the roles.
Never stop dreaming, be a believer,
And wish upon a nimble weaver,
A star right-back, a sainted attack,
A keeper who saves our souls.

Pick a team, son,
Any team you like –
But just the one.
For now you’re theirs,
And all your cares,
Your misery and fun
Are bound up in their fortunes,
Highs and lows,
As the seasons run,
From half-time mid-life woes,
Until the final whistle blows
And your game is done.

Read by Edgar, voiced by John Dobson

The Knobs Turn Both Ways

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The Knobs Turn Both Ways

“Turn it down, for Christ’s sake !”
The anthem to my teenage years –
“Is something faulty with your ears ?
Just how much of this racket must we take ?
How can you even call that noise a tune ?
And maybe you should see the doc,
Because the way you play that rock,
You must be either halfway deaf, or will be soon !”
But now it’s me who’s one of the squares,
For now it’s me the parent –
And I have to grin and bear it
As a blast of not-like-the-old-days comes rolling down the stairs.
Yet one of mine is a gentle pup
Who keeps his modern trash down low –
I sometimes want to yell, you know,
“For Christ’s sake, turn it up !”

Elevenses

high six

Elevenses

Polly Dacktle has ten fingers,
(Well, eight fingers,
And two thumbs.)
Polly Dacktle has ten fingers,
But there lingers…
What’s that…Crumbs !
Look !  She also has a spare
Upon her hand, just waiting there –
So if another needs repair,
Then out her extra digit comes.
Of course, it’s always there, if needed –
And if not, it’s there unheeded –
Always there, the ten exceeded.
(Good for doing tricky sums.)

Polly Dacktle must wear mittens,
Only mittens,
Never gloves.
Polly Dacktle must wear mittens,
Like her kittens.
(Not like doves.)
She wants fingers free to move
With ev’ry digit in its groove –
And so with scissors she’ll improve –
She snips and tears and pulls and shoves.
Now she has contrived to riddle
There a hole ’tween Ring and Middle
Where her spare can flex and fiddle,
(Just how Polly Dacktle loves.)

Polly Dacktle learns piano,
Learns piano
From her Teach.
Polly Dacktle likes piano
(Miss Delano’s
such a peach.)
Polly has to practice scales
And stretch for keys, but never fails –
Her widened span just skips and sails
And holds all music in her reach.
Gripping racquets, catching balls,
And shooting baskets, climbing walls,
Or sculpting clay, and dialing calls –
Polly scores at all and each.

Polly Dacktle isn’t evil.
Never evil,
Often good.
Polly Dacktle isn’t evil –
(Nor’s the weevil
In the wood.)
Neither one is plotting danger
Just because their look is stranger.
Polly’s fine, so never change
Her many-multi-fingerhood.
Shake her hand – there’s no electrics,
No prosthetics, no deceptricks.
She can touch in asymetrics.
(Don’t you sometimes wish you could ?)

Hydrogen Fusion

shame it doesn't show the photons

Hydrogen Fusion

H⁺ + H⁺ → D⁺ + e⁺ + νₑ
D⁺ + H⁺ → ³He⁺ + γ
³He⁺ + ³He⁺ → ⁴He²⁺ + H⁺ + H⁺

H-plus plus H-plus is D-plus,
D-plus plus H-plus, we suss,
Is positively He-3-plus,
He-3-plus twice is thus
An H-plus twice plus He-4-plus –
Plus the two H-plusses free,
To go and make some more for us.

Which is to say, a Hydrogen
Without its lone electron,
Meets another, and their new connection
Merges to Deuterium,
When another Hydrogen jumps-in
To gin them up to Helium,
Which crashes with another one –
Whereby, two Hydrogens say ‘bye’,
And out they fly, ad nauseum.

But this whole synthesis, you know,
This H-&-H-combining show,
Is not so clean –
For it also makes a new neutrino,
Indestructible and lean –
It doesn’t do much, though,
Except to leave -and there it’s keen !
It’s shooting through – just watch it go !
Except you can’t, it can’t be seen…

But H & H will also make
A beta particle –
A beta-plus, a positron,
That’s looking with much spryness
How to get it on with beta-minus –
Say a lone electron
That has lost its Hydrogen –
Birthing photon twins once done,
That one bright day will light the Sun.

‘He’ above is said with two syllables – Aitch-Ee.

Power-to-Weight Cogitatio

i do like a good graph

Power-to-Weight Cogitatio

I knew a girl called Angela Engels
With wanted to know the fundamentals –
Who wanted to know how angels flew
When they were far too large, she knew,
To stay aloft the way they do.
But then…well eagles, they’re big too,
And owls are even bigger, sure –
At least the biggest ones are bigger –
And albatrosses, once mature –
And condors are bosses, they have to figure,
With wings much wider than she was tall,
And yet…they hardly seem to flap them at all.
But hang on…there’s always swans,
And swans kept pumping through the air
And turkeys, though they hardly fly,
But yes they can, from here to there.
And bustards too can reach the sky, they say,
(Though it takes them quite the run up
To get up up and away.)

So Angela looked up size and span and stat,
And found they weren’t that fat –
Those amigos averaged less that a dozen kilos
And she knew flat how she weighed more than that.
So unless the angels, like insects, were pin-head small,
They’d surely barely rise and plenty fall.
But there was also mention
Of an ancient, mythic vulture, barely known –
Now that got her attention !
Though they had only found one bone,
And had to guess the rest and how they’d grown.
And just the same for Quetzalcoatlus
Surely that was just as hatless,
Based on fossils and guesstimates,
Not measures and weights,
And was perched uneasy on its throne.
And anyway, those both were dead –
So heck, for all their trying
They couldn’t be that great at flying, she said.

So maybe angels, though their wings are feathered,
(And they cannot be untethered
From the hug of gravity),
So maybe they employ another method in reality –
P’raps their wings are really a screen
Protecting their backs from a rocket machine
That blasts them up to Heaven instead !,
Like Newton said – and yes, alright, it’s then implied
That then their flight is just a glide back down.
(They’d also need a flameproof gown,
And goggles wouldn’t go amiss,
But she could really take to this !)
Although…well, was it heavy on the carbon,
Swimming like a tarpon through the air ?
Would angels better abstain and take the train,
To show they care ?
Angela hoped they’d be aware, and do without it,
Or at least to think about it, heed her words
And maybe leave the flying to the birds.

The Rose & The Nightingale

a bit like the flag of japan

The Rose & The Nightingale

(In reply to Oscar Wilde)

Poor little student, moping for a girl,
He yearns to have a crimson rose to give her –
“Shucks !” thinks a nightingale, heart in a whirl,
“I’ll plead with the rose-bush to deliver !
But woe, all its blossoms are white as a pearl…
…Unless I thorn my breast and sing a-quiver.”

Thus the little nightingale gives her life for beauty,
As nothing but a lacky to a human.
Raising future nightingales – that should be her duty !
At this rate, extinction’s surely looming !
The rose, though, is delighted with this unexpected booty –
With birdie’s rotting body, times are blooming !

Lonely in her dying breath, as atoms fall apart,
She thinks this makes a handy metaphor –
The poor romantic soul who bares her tender little heart
For the callous world to savagely ignore.
(Like artists ev’rywhere, she demands we love her art,
And buy into her struggles and her lore.)

As for the student, he plucks the crimson rose
(Denying for this bud to spread its seed),
And seeks out his classmate with the very pretty nose –
But she looks less than happy with his weed.
“But don’t you see ?” he says, “This bloom’s a mutant !  I propose
To splice its genes and follow where they lead.”

“Pah!” says his paramour, crushing all his dreams,
“I’m bored with ev’ry rose and phlox and crocus !
For I’m in love with rubies, sparkling in the sun-beams –
I want to find a way to make them focus…”
The student is crushed – as is the crimson rose, it seems –
He’s had enough of love and hocus-pocus !

Carcassong

meeplestars

Carcassong

Highwaymen are looting on the roads beneath the Pyranees,
As abbots tend their gardens in the misty Marin breeze,
While knights are walled in cities with their castles, shields and shrines,
And farmers lie in fields while the sunshine grows the vines.
And the River Aude is rolling down
From mountain pass to coastal town,
And from the peaks we see for miles
The chequerboard of tiles.

It turns out, the highwaymen in the opening line were all working for Lucky Hans, busy swiping other people’s property. However, I hear there is a growing resistance movement aiming to Free The Meeple !